ALBUQUERQUE (AP)--It's an event that draws cowboy-hat-clad ranchers and ponytailed environmentalists who come together to find common ground.

The Quivira Coalition's annual conference is a chance for traditional adversaries to work on their mutual commitment to preserving healthy landscapes and the Western way of life.

"These are groups with a long history of antagonism," said Courtney White, executive director of the coalition and a former leader in the Sierra Club, a conservation organization. "Our goal is to find a way to collaborate, to reach across fences and manage the land holistically."

This year's fourth annual meeting, which concluded Jan. 16, was titled "Half Public, Half Private, One West: Innovations and Opportunities Across Boundaries" and drew nearly 500 participants from across the West.

Quivira--a Spanish name for fabulous realm just beyond the horizon--is a nonprofit organization founded in 1997.

Ranchers, conservationists and state and federal land managers who come to the coalition's annual gathering represent the continued growth of what White terms the "radical center," which avoids extremism and unites diverse factions.

"Originally, the conference was just a time-out place in the grazing wars," he said, "but it's grown into a conference of ideas and practical methods for implementations of new strategies."

Seminar topics at this year's conference ranged from the survival of family ranching to long-term sustainability of watersheds.

Nineteen years ago, Oregon ranchers Doc and Connie Hatfield were "going broke" ranching traditionally. Now they've preserved their income and promoted their way of life.

They told attendees about their success with an agricultural collaborative that produces and markets natural beef. The group, with 165 participants, has a representative from each of 70 ranching families on its board.

"In our group, seven young families have come back to the ranches since we started," Connie Hatfield said. "That's sustainability."

Jim and Joy Williams, who own a ranch near Quemado in southwestern New Mexico, were honored for outstanding land stewardship.

Jim Williams, whose father considered environmentalists a curse, said he would never have imagined receiving such recognition from such a group ten years ago.

He worked with Quivira to improve his land and watershed after drought and grazing cuts put a strain on his operation.

White called the Williams' ranch an excellent example of the coalition's work and plans to enlist the rancher as part of a project he's developing called the New Ranch Network. The network will serve as a resource pool of specialists, mentors and experts from the ranching and environmental communities.

"If we can find ways to resolve conflict that creates value on both sides, that's when true change will happen," White said.

Date: 1/27/05

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